Conventionally, the price information on price tags in shops is always changed manually when the price of the product is changed. The new prices are printed out on paper or a corresponding material, and these tags with their new price markings are placed manually in a location reserved for the price tags on shelves in the sales premises. Thus, an employee must first find the correct location of the price tag to be updated, after which the previous price tag is removed and discarded and the new price tag is inserted in its position. A disadvantage in this arrangement is, among other things, the fact that the arrangement is very laborious and there is a high risk of mistakes. In case of a mistake, a situation may, for example, occur, in which the price information on the price tags on the shelves conflicts with the price information in the cash register system.
To avoid the above-mentioned drawbacks, electronic systems have been developed, in which electronic price display units and their electronic displays are provided on the front edge or above the shelves, close to the products, in which the price information of the products can be changed in a centralized manner from the control center of the system, or the like. This will facilitate and accelerate the updating of the price information to a significant extent.
Also Point-of-Sale (POS) systems are used in the retail environment. The POS-systems of the prior art are used in various retail situations and they are implemented with hardware and software tailored to their particular requirements. Retailers may utilize weighing scales, scanners, electronic and manual cash registers, EFTPOS terminals, touch screens and a variety of other hardware and software available. POS software may also include additional features to cater for different functionality, such as inventory management, CRM, financials, warehousing, etc.
It's also known to use inventory or stock control systems in retail environment. Typical features of stock control systems include e.g. ensuring that the products are on the shelf in shops in just the right quantity, recognizing when a customer has bought a product, signaling when more products need to be put on the shelf from the stockroom, reordering stock at the appropriate time from the main warehouse, producing management information reports that could be used both by the store and also at head office.
Regular inventory checks are carried out in stores to check that the information of the inventory management system corresponds to the real situation of the store. With above described prior art systems it's not possible to easily indicate which products in the store have been inventoried and which products still have to be inventoried. With the prior art systems it's also not possible to carry out continuous inventory checking process but the inventory check has to be done e.g. in one day and so that the store has to be closed during the inventory check.